The survey was fielded among 100 executives with responsibility for customer experience and user experience within their organizations. Most (70%) of these respondents report that customer experience has been a focus at their organization for more than 3 years, and 72% have a dedicated customer experience department.

About half (52%) of the respondents agreed that they are adapting to changing preferences that will have a long-term effect, though in the near-term there is little difference. Another sizable proportion (37%) agreed that they are under pressure to adapt to Millennial preferences in the near-term.

Just 8% don’t see a difference in Millennial preferences, and barely any (3%) don’t serve enough Millennial customers or lack the segmentation to differentiate.

Millennials’ clout is also being seen in the creation of organizational strategies to specifically boost their satisfaction and retention. (Satisfaction and retention are the leading KPIs for respondents’ CX efforts.)

One-third already have a Millennial-focused CX strategy in place, and another third do so as part of a segmented customer experience strategy.

That leaves about a third either lacking a strategy but with the intention of developing one (23%) or not prioritizing such a strategy at this time (11%). As a result, many report that the lack of a strategy is an obstacle to targeting Millennials within their customer experience strategy. That counts as the one of the largest challenges to targeting Millennials.

Encouragingly, only 8% cited executive buy-in as the biggest obstacle to targeting Millennials within their customer experience strategy.

Separately, the pressure to adapt to Millennials’ preferences can also be seen in the areas that are prioritized for budget plans. Namely, mobile is the top priority (of 5 areas) for a leading 30% of respondents, and a top-2 priority for almost half (48%).

Social media also emerges as a top-2 priority for close to half (45%), on par with in-store in terms of CX prioritization.